Feds and Utility Companies Face Off Over Solar EMP Threat

[silversnake]

Why does everyone assume that no one, not a single person or company world wide, would find a way to rebuild a gas powered generator and move it to a power plant to help get that back up and running and so one down the line?

Its not like an EMP will wipe out the knowledge of how to produce power.

And 99% of the power grid will still be usable. We would just have to replace the broken parts to make it whole again.

From what I've read, the amount of wire necessary to get the surge effect is in the mile+ range. You're not going to get that much in your house, and if you do, then I'm going to come to your place, cause you've got like WAY too big a house *laugh*.

I guess this is mostly a matter of real diverging from fiction then. Any recommendations on technical reference online? I ask because I (and many folks I know) appear to be under the mistaken belief that a sufficiently strong EMP can overload electronics to the point of causing physical damage to the microchips in a modern car and ruining the circuit boards in a computer - even one disconnected from everything else - thus the talk on many forums about BOVs based on decades-old vehicles and such.

[JesterODX]

People ask me why I started prepping and the honest answer is this. A friend of mine that does some open source intel breifs told me about this mess when NASA first started telling the government they might have an issue. Thats why I always say infrastructure when asked why I'm prepping. Power going out for any real length of time, especially in the winter, means serious problems for millions of people.

MacAttack, you wouldnt have to rebuild a generator. Most generators wont be running. A regular old generator wont be affected just sitting in the garage or box on the shelf. Now computerized stuff with out power to it or a battery in it, lord only knows. The problem is getting the fuel to run it. Plenty of fuel around, but it will have to be hand pumped out of the storage tanks.

The thing is if it effected all of the transformers in the US, theoretically speaking. Even if we had enough replacements, it takes days to weeks to fix all the transformers from wind storms and that is with calling in linemen from other areas. I assume they dont have even a tenth of the number of transformers the US uses in warehouses ready to go...

Even if this storm just effected a fourth of the US, for that fourth, its still gonan take longer then a month to fix what is fried. Any electronics it fries we can fix or make new ones. It will just not be an over night process. But with any luck, we wont get the massive solar event that is possible and all will be well.

[raptor]

Why does everyone assume that no one, not a single person or company world wide, would find a way to rebuild a gas powered generator and move it to a power plant to help get that back up and running and so one down the line?


Its not like an EMP will wipe out the knowledge of how to produce power.

And 99% of the power grid will still be usable. We would just have to replace the broken parts to make it whole again. Little by little things will come back. I feel bad for those on life support though.


For the most part we have enough material to do this just laying around unsold yet in warehouses. Some few specialty parts would have to be worked around of course but its not like we haven't done that before.


A single EMP will NOT send us back to the stone age.
If one hit every time we repaired the system then we could, could, maybe, eventually reach a point that we could not repair things again. But that would also take giving up the repair projects and then forgetting how to do the repairs.

I do not think anyone here assumes that this would throw us back to the stone age. At least I sure do not think that. However, I do see where a black out could in theory affect large parts of the industrial world for days and in same parts weeks.

Obviously there would be places with power and the knowledge would still exist. The problem could come from simple damage like a large number of transformers being destoyed. BTW many of these have PCB laced oil so if you see a transformer fire stay away from it.

In the case of a lot of transformer damage it would take a while to replace the units and get power back up. Right now for instance for hurricane crews from around the country are sent to the afflicted area and they share spare parts. If this happened on a nationwide basis the crews would be busy at home and need there spare parts. Obviously the lines would get fixed but it may take more time and even longer if for instance they ran out out of spare transformers. It takes a while to make these items.

So I do not think anyone thinks we would be in the stone age, but can you imagine a metro area anywhere in the US that would be pleasant if the power was out for week. In my area the BR and GNO area was largely without power for week after Gustave. It was not TEOTWAWKI but it was not pleasant.


BTW one comment about transfer switches for whole house generators. Years ago when I was designing the standby power for my house I vacillated between a manual or automatic switch. I was assured that each was equally reliable and that the automatic switch could be move to engage if the "automatic portion failed". I settled for a manual switch.

The logic good bad or indifferent was as followed. If the power failed it could be the result of some EMP or similar event. If the power switched over automatically then the standby power could be compromised. The manual switch offered better isolation from such problems. I have that protection but that means I have to go out start the generator, shut down the main feed switch to the standby feed and bring the house up on the stand by power.

My neighbor has a nice new automatic 20 kw water cooled NG powered unit that when a neighborhood transformer blew out not too long ago switched over automatically ran the power unit for the hour or so the power was off and then switched off when the power came back. I turn sat in the dark because I was too lazy to go out and start up the generator and switch the power for what I thought was going to be a 10 minute power outage. Guess which way I would go if I did this again?

[torcher]

Does anyone know how a large EMP event would affect natural gas transmission? I have a NG generator.

[raptor]

Does anyone know how a large EMP event would affect natural gas transmission? I have a NG generator.

That is kind of like asking what a hurricane would do. It is very hard to predict exactly what would happen. There are EMP events and there bad EMP events. Think cat 1 and cat 5 hurricanes.

However if you are talking about a solar storm induced EMP event as per this thread. I think if the generator was not running at the time the event occurred or if it was not hooked up to the house with the automatic circuit, any effects on the generator would be minor.

Now if you are talking about a man made EMP event that could put the pulse nearby the generator then that may have radially different results. Still a lot would depend on the exposure, duration, any shielding natural or otherwise, whether it was running or stopped, etc.

[RickOShea]

I'm wondering what kind of "transformers" the report is talking about? The large three-phase power transformers in the distribution substations and the "on the pole" CSP transformers trip-off when they overheat. The "conventional" pole-mounted transformers and pad-mounted underground transformers will blow a replaceable fuse.

Yeah, it would take awhile to go thru and trip them back on or replace the fuses, but unless the coils somehow get damaged (like from a direct lightning strike), I don't see why they would need to be replaced.

[RickOShea]

On a similar note there are 3 key feeder grids that feed power to NOLA & BR. They are prone to hurricane damage. After Hurricane Gustave left a lot of people without power due to this grid damage, a hue and cry went up to "harden" this grid and bury it for safety reasons. The cost was staggering and hence rejected by the utility's regulator.

Yeah, underground construction cost 3 to 5 times as much as over-head. It doesn't go out as often as OH construction, but when it does, it can take 3 to 5 times as long to fix it and get it back on.

And that's for 7.2KV or 14.4KV distribution lines, I'd hate to think what underground 100KV and 300KV transmission lines would cost.

Not to mention trying to keep all that stuff buried as it runs thru all the swamps and bayous. That stuff just pops-up out of the sand down at the beach after a good soaking rain.......And it's a Got Dayum mess after a good tropical storm or hurricane.

[torcher]

Does anyone know how a large EMP event would affect natural gas transmission? I have a NG generator.

That is kind of like asking what a hurricane would do. It is very hard to predict exactly what would happen. There are EMP events and there bad EMP events. Think cat 1 and cat 5 hurricanes.

However if you are talking about a solar storm induced EMP event as per this thread. I think if the generator was not running at the time the event occurred or if it was not hooked up to the house with the automatic circuit, any effects on the generator would be minor.

Now if you are talking about a man made EMP event that could put the pulse nearby the generator then that may have radially different results. Still a lot would depend on the exposure, duration, any shielding natural or otherwise, whether it was running or stopped, etc.

Thanks,Raptor.Genny is not permanently connected.Just a 2000wt Yamaha-enough to run my fridge,a 5000btu AC,TV,and a couple cfl bulbs.I actually store it in a closet (without gas) since my last (outdoor) generator was ruined by ants in the inverter section.

My concern is with the gas supply itself.If the whole electrical grid is offline from Texas to SE Florida will the NG keep flowing through the pipelines?

[RickOShea]

Guess it depends on where your NG is coming from. The US has several regional grids. Some are in better shape than others.

[Bunsen]

Why does everyone assume that no one, not a single person or company world wide, would find a way to rebuild a gas powered generator and move it to a power plant to help get that back up and running and so one down the line?

Its not like an EMP will wipe out the knowledge of how to produce power.

And 99% of the power grid will still be usable. We would just have to replace the broken parts to make it whole again.

From what I've read, the amount of wire necessary to get the surge effect is in the mile+ range. You're not going to get that much in your house, and if you do, then I'm going to come to your place, cause you've got like WAY too big a house *laugh*.

I guess this is mostly a matter of real diverging from fiction then. Any recommendations on technical reference online? I ask because I (and many folks I know) appear to be under the mistaken belief that a sufficiently strong EMP can overload electronics to the point of causing physical damage to the microchips in a modern car and ruining the circuit boards in a computer - even one disconnected from everything else - thus the talk on many forums about BOVs based on decades-old vehicles and such.

The difference is between a solar-induced geomagnetic storm (irrelevant to anything neither in orbit nor connected to miles of metal) and a nuclear EMP (potentially dangerous to anything with a few inches of wire). They are very, very different events, despite the media's affection for conflating the two. The nuclear EMP risk gets exaggerated a lot also (go read the EMP Commission's report on vehicle tests, compare that to the general Internet Knowledge floating around most forums), but that's an issue for another thread (actually quite a few other threads, as I recall).

I'm wondering what kind of "transformers" the report is talking about? The large three-phase power transformers in the distribution substations and the "on the pole" CSP transformers trip-off when they overheat. The "conventional" pole-mounted transformers and pad-mounted underground transformers will blow a replaceable fuse.

Yeah, it would take awhile to go thru and trip them back on or replace the fuses, but unless the coils somehow get damaged (like from a direct lightning strike), I don't see why they would need to be replaced.

The big ones. Geomagnetic fields induce low-frequency (essentially DC compared to 60Hz) currents in the long, high lines, the cores of the big transformers saturate, magnetic flux goes where it shouldn't, things overheat where they normally don't, insulation fails, arcing happens. If the overheating protection is based on the coolant temperature, it may not catch it in time since the heating tends to be concentrated in certain areas rather than evenly spread around. The nice part is that the geomagnetic-induced current is nowhere near enough to cause overheating by itself -- you need the AC turned on for that, so you can protect the transformers simply by shutting off the power.

(Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard you laugh at the word "simply." Hey, it's simple from a physics point of view. )

[KnightoftheRoc]

I'm hearing a lot of talk about inverter use. You need to consider that an inverter IS a transformer, at it's very core- that's why they weigh so freakin much- it's the step-up transformer that changes the low voltage/high amperage (once a frequency has been established in the DC to emulate AC) to high voltage/low amperage power, usable in your home. Depending on the design of this transformer, it may have plenty of wire wrapped in it to act as an antennae and pick up the EMP frequency. I'm no expert on this topic, but having already gone solar is not, IMO, any guarantee against the effects of an EMP, regardless of it's cause.

An automatic transfer switch sounds good- but how fast does it react? Not fast enough to beat the flow of electricity, I'd bet- that's just a tad under the speed of light. Disconnects and circuit breakers MOSTLY work on heat, which is caused by an increased amperage flow- heat takes time to transfer from it's initial source to the sensor that trips the disconnect- a transfer that can be measured in seconds, in the case of a big transformer, simply from the amo8unt of material involved. I wouldn't bet any money on those being enough to protect much. There are magnetic based circuit breakers out there, but they are much less common, and more expensive, than the standard temperature based breakers. They can react faster, because the magnetic field changes almost as fast as the electrical flow does- a difference that be the deciding factor in "does it catch fire, or not?"

Something I'd like clarification on, if someone with a PHD can be so kind- does the wiring being affected by an EMP need to be part of a closed circuit to be damaged, or can the effects be so strong as to induce a current in the absence of a complete circuit. My training has always said that a circuit must be closed for current to flow, period, but I doubt they considered this type of scenario, either.
I'm thinking that, if given warning in time, simply turning off the simpler circuits, like that of an electric motor, might be enough to protect them, if the closed circuit is required. Electronic circuits, given the many, diverse pathways involved, probably wouldn't stand a chance if the current were induced along the circuit traces.

[KentsOkay]

Guess it depends on where your NG is coming from. The US has several regional grids. Some are in better shape than others.

Sweet Spaghetti I love Texas, please tell me that Texas has a better power grid.

Somehow I know it isn't

[Tater Raider]

My concern is with the gas supply itself. If the whole electrical grid is offline from Texas to SE Florida will the NG keep flowing through the pipelines?

Everything runs off electricity from cash registers to water treatment plants. If the grid is completely down then you aren't going to have any services at all.

Those same services will be the first thing restored too.

I read somewhere earlier in here "...down for years..." and the only way that would come about is if you destroyed the power plants. By destroyed I mean burned completely to the ground.

On electricity usage, assume for a moment that you have a 100% electric home (heat, A/C, stove, laundry, the whole smash). About 1/3 of your electric is just heating and cooling. the 3 things you can do to reduce usage here is insulate, insulate, and insulate. Check into earth berm homes, replace those windows, and get a programable thermostat to adjust the temps up or down when you aren't there. I know of families who have an electric bill under $50/month because of this and this alone.

Continuing, 1/4 of your total usage is in the kitchen. Look at the efficiency ratings on appliances when the time comes to replace them and then put the thermostat in the fridge at the highest setting that keeps things safely cool.

If you focus in on these 2 areas of power consumption you are addressing over half of your power needs right there.

On not being able to generate enough power to run a house on your own I call bullshit. Larry Hagman (of Dallas and I Dream of Jeannie fame - I feel so old now) runs a solar/wind hybrid system at his mansion and generates enough power that he provides electricity to a neighbor as well, and does so at a massively reduced rate off what the utilities out there charge so don't give me that. Granted, he spent a lot of money, but he also got a huge rebate on it and he makes enough power for the mansion, his 44 acre farm, and provide power for the nieghbors.



It's all about what you are willing to spend and what you end up saving. Raptor has done an excellent breakdown on this in another thread on solar and why he chose not to go that route - it's worth the search to find it.

[raptor]

Sweet Spaghetti I love Texas, please tell me that Texas has a better power grid.

Somehow I know it isn't

Texas is it's own grid system it has few feeder lines coming in and fewer going out of Texas. So the good news is that Texas is fairly independent and less likely to suffer a regional failure like for instance the 2003 blackout on the east coast. However that is a two edged sword. If key grids go down power cannot be "shipped" to Texas from out side its grid.

Also Texas due to grown and demand the power generating systems are lagging and new ones need to be built because of its grid isolation. My experience with power in Houston were a lot of blackouts caused by thunderstorms.

[Bunsen]

I'm hearing a lot of talk about inverter use. You need to consider that an inverter IS a transformer, at it's very core- that's why they weigh so freakin much- it's the step-up transformer that changes the low voltage/high amperage (once a frequency has been established in the DC to emulate AC) to high voltage/low amperage power, usable in your home. Depending on the design of this transformer, it may have plenty of wire wrapped in it to act as an antennae and pick up the EMP frequency. I'm no expert on this topic, but having already gone solar is not, IMO, any guarantee against the effects of an EMP, regardless of it's cause.

The big transformers aren't vulnerable because of their own windings, it's because they're connected to a loop antenna with many square miles of cross-section. The fields involved in a geomagnetic storm are far too slow and weak to affect anything small enough to move. If you can pick it up, or even pull it behind a truck, it's too small to care until you plug it into an antenna the size of a small city.

This part's important, so it's time for obnoxious big text in hopes that everyone else will read this bit and I won't have to type it again for a while:
For anything you can pick up, you can actually simulate the effect of a geomagnetic storm a hundred times stronger than the Carrington event: Pick the thing up, and turn around very slowly -- take about 30 seconds. The change in the Earth's magnetic field felt by you, and everything you're holding, will peak at about 500 microtesla per minute. The Carrington event peaked somewhere below 5 microtesla per minute. It's that change in magnetic field that induces the currents, and it takes rather sensitive instrumentation to even detect a change that small -- unless you have a freakin' enormous pickup loop. If you can pick it up and turn it around without killing it, a solar storm can't do a damn thing to it.

An automatic transfer switch sounds good- but how fast does it react? Not fast enough to beat the flow of electricity, I'd bet- that's just a tad under the speed of light. Disconnects and circuit breakers MOSTLY work on heat, which is caused by an increased amperage flow- heat takes time to transfer from it's initial source to the sensor that trips the disconnect- a transfer that can be measured in seconds, in the case of a big transformer, simply from the amo8unt of material involved. I wouldn't bet any money on those being enough to protect much. There are magnetic based circuit breakers out there, but they are much less common, and more expensive, than the standard temperature based breakers. They can react faster, because the magnetic field changes almost as fast as the electrical flow does- a difference that be the deciding factor in "does it catch fire, or not?"

The important thing isn't how fast things travel along the lines, but how fast a surge ramps up the voltage. The direct effects of a geomagnetic storm are laughably slow -- rise times of several minutes, typically. But they can't damage your equipment anyway, because your house isn't fed directly from the long multi-hundred-kV lines. The only risk to your own gear is from the possibility that a failing transformer could produce a surge as it dies, which I expect would be similar to other surges in the grid from other causes. If the gear is designed to withstand the effects of grid hiccups caused by downed power lines and such, it should be fine.

Something I'd like clarification on, if someone with a PHD can be so kind- does the wiring being affected by an EMP need to be part of a closed circuit to be damaged, or can the effects be so strong as to induce a current in the absence of a complete circuit. My training has always said that a circuit must be closed for current to flow, period, but I doubt they considered this type of scenario, either.
I'm thinking that, if given warning in time, simply turning off the simpler circuits, like that of an electric motor, might be enough to protect them, if the closed circuit is required. Electronic circuits, given the many, diverse pathways involved, probably wouldn't stand a chance if the current were induced along the circuit traces.

Remember to distinguish between a geomagnetic storm and a nuclear EMP. A nuclear EMP involves radio frequencies, which can induce significant voltage in small conductors, with or without a complete loop (this is how your radio picks up signals with a single-ended metal stick for an antenna -- no complete circuit there). But that's not what this thread is about -- we're talking about solar-induced geomagnetic storms, which cannot do that.

[torcher]

I called TECO energy and spoke to a nice lady there.She said that all TECO NG compressors are run by NG motors and all control facilities have NG generators for back-up power.They seem to think that they can continue to supply product indefinitely if the electric grid goes down-if their supply remains constant.She is pretty sure the NG wholesalers have contigency plans but could not guarantee that fact.

After Wilma are local grid was down for 3 days and my own power was out for 10 days and the NG was un-interupted.

[RickOShea]

Sweet Spaghetti I love Texas, please tell me that Texas has a better power grid.

Also Texas due to grown and demand the power generating systems are lagging and new ones need to be built because of its grid isolation. My experience with power in Houston were a lot of blackouts caused by thunderstorms.

A lot of that depends on seasonal weather patterns. Here on my part of the GC, we get hammered hard by thunderstorms about every other afternoon between the last half of July and the first half of August. Our families pretty much know not to expect us to get home until 8:00pm or 9:00pm (and sometimes midnight) during those few weeks.

As far as the regional grids go, we had sumdood from the NRECA put on a presentation a few years ago about them. IIRC, the FRCC, and large parts of the WECC (mostly California), RCF and NPCC were the grids that were lagging behind in adding load capacity.

The TRE, SPP, SERC and MRO were supposed to be in pretty good shape (as they stand now) for the next 15 to 20 years.

[RickOShea]

The important thing isn't how fast things travel along the lines, but how fast a surge ramps up the voltage. The direct effects of a geomagnetic storm are laughably slow -- rise times of several minutes, typically.

So, the automatic regulators* in the substations and downline would have plenty of time to adjust the system voltage (unless/until they bottom-out on their adjustment range) ?

*They're typically set to "step-up" or "step-down" the system voltage in increments, every 15 to 60 seconds depending on where they are, and depending on if the load is rising or falling.

[Bunsen]

The important thing isn't how fast things travel along the lines, but how fast a surge ramps up the voltage. The direct effects of a geomagnetic storm are laughably slow -- rise times of several minutes, typically.

So, the automatic regulators* in the substations and downline would have plenty of time to adjust the system voltage (unless/until they bottom-out on their adjustment range) ?

*They're typically set to "step-up" or "step-down" the system voltage in increments, every 15 to 60 seconds depending on where they are, and depending on if the load is rising or falling.

The geomagnetic induction doesn't directly affect the AC voltage (I should have emphasized this more, and the more I look at that post the more I think I misinterpreted KotR's meaning in that paragraph. I'll blame insufficient coffee); it just adds a DC current that's bad for the transformers if it gets too large (and transformers don't transfer DC, so that doesn't get carried over to the lower-voltage side). The only way you get a change in the AC behavior is if a transformer goes into saturation. I'm not sure how the downstream systems react to that; the first symptom would be a distortion of the AC waveform and a reduction in peak-to-peak voltage (either the peaks or the valleys of the wave start to flatten, but my mind works in single-phase so I don't know exactly what that implies in a three-phase system).

If it keeps up for any length of time, then the overheating windings can arc, or weld, or whatever it is they do when their insulation goes to hell. I expect that would create transients down the line, which is where you start to see a risk of damaging smaller-scale infrastructure or customer equipment. How the intermediate sections of the grid would react to those is also an area I'm ignorant but curious about.

[RickOShea]

I'm reading that those geomagnetic storms not only induce voltage, but also significantly higher amps. Most of our "protecting" devices operate by detecting a rise in amps (instead of a drop in voltage).

So, if all those downline reclosers and sectionalizers start "opening" due to high amperage, then all those looooong stretches of powerlines that "cause the geomagnetic effect" are going to be basically broken up into shorter individual segments..... Which would alleviate the inducement and help minimize any permanent equipment damage?

[KnightoftheRoc]

Bunsen-
Thank you. You seemed to understand what I was asking just fine, and I say that because I was able to understand the answers.
I'm not really worried about a nuke-initiated EMP having a direct affect on my gear- my feeling is, if I'm close enough for it to happen, I have bigger worries than my laptop getting fried (AGAIN ), and I'd be leaving the fried electronics behind, because I'm gonna beat feet!

[Tater Raider]

I'm not really worried about a nuke-initiated EMP having a direct affect on my gear- my feeling is, if I'm close enough for it to happen, I have bigger worries than my laptop getting fried (AGAIN ), and I'd be leaving the fried electronics behind, because I'm gonna beat feet!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you feel strongly about a nuclear EMP event then you need to address the entire nuclear threat for your area to determine if you need a fallout shelter or a blast shelter, because if someone launches an EMP nuke on the US the policy is, "Where did that come from?" said while the nukes are still in the air followed closely by, "Well, they had a rich cultural heritage right up until about 15 minutes ago."

This means they better launch everything they've got because they aren't getting a second chance to do it right.

All nuclear powers have the same policy limited only by the size of their arsenal. This is why the doctrine is called MAD and also why it has worked for so long - launching one nuke in anger is going to take care of the surplus population for the next millenia or 3.

IMNTBHO (on this subject): If you are honest with yourself then you can't prep for the one while ignoring the other and consider your preps complete.

[KnightoftheRoc]

Well, I don't consider my preps anywhere even CLOSE to "complete", but you make a good point- you can't ignore one if you're prepping for the other. But, what I mean about not worrying about a nuke EMP, is exactly what you mentioned- Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). I feel the likelihood of anyone launching a nuke to create the EMP would be a suicide attempt that would include their entire country and maybe even some of their neighbors. So, I consider the likelihood to be low, but NOT impossible.

Now, considering it as an event that's already/currently happening- my area is under nuclear attack, screw the laptops and Itunes, baby, I'm outta here. My focus would be on survival, not entertainment, and entertainment is really the only form of electronics I would need to sweat. I've got several locations around me that were CONFIRMED as nuclear targets during the cold war: a government records center, a nuclear reactor, and (at the time) world headquarters for IBM, along with a few others.

Whether or not any of those are still valid targets on a computer somewhere, I wouldn't know, but if it's a tactical target to one country, I'd think it would be for another as well. So, solar EMP, I can deal with- nukes are another type of worry for me altogether.

YMMV, batteries not included, offer void in certain areas, etc.

[JesterODX]

All nuclear powers have the same policy limited only by the size of their arsenal. This is why the doctrine is called MAD and also why it has worked for so long - launching one nuke in anger is going to take care of the surplus population for the next millenia or 3.

Mutual Assurd Destruction. That isnt the real worry for me. Its the guy with one off the black market or the nuts like North Korea. And the only reason NK worries me is they have proven their rocket technology isnt up to par. So their missle intended for DC might end up hitting NC.

But you guys are deffinatly right on the nuc EMP. If that is our worry, then we have much, much larger problems. About 300 mega tons larger problems. And then with the solar storms, no one really knows what is gonna happen if anything. And if it does do anything and if it is as powerful as they think that is possible they still dont have a clue as to what kind of dammage it will do. And the only way to know for sure is to have it happen.